assortative
A couple weeks ago, I came across the phrase assortative mating in an article about autism: Judith Warner explores a provocative theory about why rates of autism, particularly the mild...
Archive for New-to-me Words
LPT
LPT, I recently learned, stands for Life Pro Tip: a tip about how to do something in real life (as opposed to on a computer). My understanding is that, as...
craic
In May, I saw the following line in an article about bicycling, socializing, and social networks in Dublin: “We just want to show how cycling is a social thing to...
desenrascanço
Desenrascanço is a Portuguese word more or less meaning “disentanglement,” used to refer to improvising solutions, or, as one web page puts it, “an ability to solve a problem without...
vagina et alia
The brouhaha over a Michigan state Representative being banned from speaking on the House floor after saying the word “vagina” has led to, among other outcomes, a spate of articles...
arsy-tansy
Not long ago, I read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (in a printed copy, on paper—the relevance of which I'll explain later), and was struck by this...
A slash by any other name
A couple of days ago, I wrote about abbreviations containing slashes; researching that reminded me to mention that there are a couple of different names for slashes, and a couple...
time gun
Sadly, a time gun isn't what I, as a science fiction fan, initially thought it was. However, it is nonetheless kinda cool. A time gun is apparently a cannon or...
scrummy
Apparently “scrummy” is a portmanteau of scrumptious and yummy. I had initially assumed it must mean something like “scummy.”...
woop woop
I recently encountered the term Woop Woop, which turns out to be, according to answers.com, “An imaginary town in the remote outback, supposedly backward.” The example sentence, from the Sydney...